Twist of Fate
by fbeauchamphartz
Summary: Sebastian and Kurt are best friends, in love, but with no hope of ever being together since neither has discovered their soulmate and they're pretty sure that if they were meant to be together, it would have happened by now. One night, they get mugged, and all at once something incredible and tragic happens. Is there a way that they can live happily ever after? Kurt H. Sebastian S.
1. Chapter 1

"So, it hasn't happened to you yet?" Kurt asks, taking a sip from his non-fat mocha. He shivers when a nighttime breeze slips up his sleeve and manages to chill him despite the heat of the coffee warding off the cold.

"Fuck no, obviously," Sebastian laughs, switching places with Kurt subconsciously to block his thin-skinned friend against the wind, "and thank God. I mean, first of all, I don't _want_ a soulmate, I don't _need_ a soulmate, I hope I fucking never _find_ my soulmate."

Kurt flinches, unexpectedly wounded by Sebastian's words.

"You don't?" he says, hiding his hurt in another sip of his coffee.

"Nope," Sebastian says with his trademark cynicism. "Why would I need a soulmate when I have you?" Sebastian winks and Kurt smiles into his cup. He wants to believe that's true, but it's inevitable. Eventually Kurt is going to stumble across his soulmate and Sebastian would find his. It would strike like lightning, from out of nowhere, and their friendship – this strange weed that took root and bloomed into a wild and fabulous flower – would be over. A soulmate overwhelms you, Kurt heard - your love for them all-encompassing. Kurt has a feeling that Sebastian will find his soulmate first, and after that, he won't even remember Kurt exists.

Kurt swallows hard at the thought of Sebastian in the arms of some man – some other man who isn't him.

"And besides," Sebastian continues, filling the silence, "that whole bodyswapping thing is just fucking creepy."

Kurt sputters, then laughs, and Sebastian reacts with a hearty laugh of his own. He's heard Sebastian moan over and over about this one particular aspect of the soulmate finding process. No one really understands it, as is the way with all highly contested scientific truths. Not a single person chose their own soulmate. A combination of genetics, personality factors, brain chemistry, and plain blind luck did it for you. Your soulmate could be a stranger you meet at a coffee shop tomorrow or someone you've known your entire life. One day, for whatever reason, the two of you switch bodies and then you know that person is the one for you. In that time when you are not yourself, you imprint in their bodies, on their DNA, and the two of you become one.

He accepts it, but he has to agree. It's creepy. But whether Sebastian likes it or not, it's a fact of nature, and you can't fight nature.

"The switch only lasts for about a week," Kurt reassures him.

"Yeah, well, do you think I want to be out of my body for a week?" Sebastian asks with a groan. "I mean, I can see why some other poor sucker would want to be all up in this…" Sebastian gestures down the length of his body with a sweep of his hands, "but personally, I don't want to be stuck up in someone else's skin. I mean, I won't even use another man's shower. Why am I going to want to live in their body?"

"I don't know," Kurt laughs, shaking his head. He looks down at his feet, watching the toes of his shoes skim across the dirty concrete. "I guess the universe thought it was a romantic notion."

"Yeah, well, I have it on pretty good authority that the universe doesn't necessarily give a shit about us puny humans," Sebastian retorts in a tight voice. Kurt's head snaps up to meet Sebastian's eyes, but he's glowering straight ahead, his jaw locked. Sebastian had his own ideas about soulmates and everlasting love…and which one of them would find theirs first.

Already he can picture himself taking this walk for their nightly coffee alone.

"And whose authority is that?" Kurt asks.

Sebastian chews thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek while he considers how he's going to answer Kurt's question. He sees a subtle movement from the corner of his eye and tries to ignore it, but it's like the erratic swooping of a fly in and out of his blind spot. He has to be rid of it.

He turns and catches Kurt's eye as Kurt pulls his tongue back in his mouth, rushing to recompose the face he was making while Sebastian sulked. A smile spreads wide on Sebastian's face as all the snarky comments and bitter remarks are sucked away.

"Me, okay?" Sebastian says, reaching out an arm to shove Kurt away, but sinking his fingers into the arm of Kurt's coat instead and tugging him close. "I'm the authority."

"Good to know," Kurt says, tossing his empty coffee cup away in a wire trash can at the corner of the sidewalk they're on.

"Why?" Sebastian presses the button for the light, but then crosses against it anyway.

"Because now I know to ignore all that bullshit you just said."

Sebastian chuckles, absorbed in Kurt's warmth, his smell, the way he fits so comfortably beneath his arm. He can't imagine anything in the world that will be better than this. He steals a moment to pretend that Kurt _is_ his soulmate, that the two of them are meant to be together.

He lets his guard down.

The click of a slide brings him back.

"Give me your wallet," a rough voice hisses from behind them. "Now!"

Kurt and Sebastian stop walking at the same time.

Sebastian turns slowly, pushing Kurt reflexively behind his body as he does. Sebastian sees the gun – not so much the man holding it.

"It's alright," Sebastian says, slowly reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. "I'll give you my wallet. You don't need to shoot anyone."

Sebastian slips his hand into his pocket and finds nothing. He pats down the pockets of his jeans and freezes.

He didn't bring his wallet.

It was Kurt's turn to treat.

Kurt even made a big joke of making Sebastian leave his wallet at home. It was sitting on his kitchen table where he had dropped it hastily before they left Kurt's apartment.

"Uh…Kurt," Sebastian whispers, swallowing hard, "I don't have my wallet."

"Shit," Kurt whimpers, frantically searching his own pockets for his wallet.

"Wait," the man with the gun says, craning his neck to peer around Sebastian's body at the sound of rustling, "what's going on? What's your girlfriend doing back there?"

Sebastian meets the man's eyes for the first time – red veins spider webbing over the yellow-tinged whites surround thin brown irises and pupils blown abnormally wide, even for nighttime. His gun hand shakes, sometimes vibrating his whole arm, and he shifts feet – left to right – as if preparing to run any second. His shoulders twitch, and his free hand reaches up to scratch at his neck, at dirty skin already clawed raw.

Sebastian feels a sudden sense of urgency grip at him and squeeze hard.

This man is tripping hardcore.

Sebastian needs to get Kurt away from him…now.

"Uh, Kurt, honey," Sebastian whispers again, trying to stay calm. "Could you hurry up, please?"

"I'm trying," Kurt says through trembling lips, his palms sweating, trying to grab hold of the wallet trapped in the pocket of his skinny jeans with his fingertips.

"I said, what's going on over there?" the man yells, eyes darting back and forth immediately down the dark sidewalk, looking for oncoming foot traffic.

"Nothing," Sebastian says, an edge to his forced calm, "I don't have my wallet."

"I…I do," Kurt stutters, reaching around Sebastian's body and tossing his wallet to the man with the gun. It lands at the gunman's feet, but he doesn't look at it. His eyes go wide instead at the sight of Kurt standing beside but slightly behind Sebastian, gripping tight to Sebastian's arm. The man's chapped lips twist, exposing greying teeth and bleeding gums.

"Are you…are you guys homos?" he growls, his gun hand shaking more, or maybe he's waving it, the barrel bouncing back and forth between them.

Kurt doesn't know what to say. He has always believed in standing up to bullies, in not denying himself, so he's more than mortified when his gut reaction is to blurt out _no!_ But obviously this situation is different. This man has a gun. He doesn't seem completely stable, and he doesn't look like he approves of Kurt and Sebastian.

Ironic that the drugged-out mugger is going to discriminate against them for their lifestyle choices.

Look at _his_ life right now.

But he has a gun, so at this moment, he makes the rules.

"You have his wallet," Sebastian says slowly, trying to back Kurt away. A single movement of his foot brings the attention of the mugger's gun back to Sebastian's face and holds steady. Sebastian freezes. "Just pick it up and go."

It sounds reasonable to Kurt. It's an excellent, thought out plan. Kurt holds his breath and bites hard on his tongue, cowering beneath the cold gaze bearing down on him, and prays the mugger takes Sebastian's advice – that he takes the wallet and runs.

If he doesn't, he still has the upper hand.

A wallet, or two dead men and a wallet are the same thing, really.

Kurt tries not to look at the gun. Maybe if he doesn't acknowledge its existence, the man will forget he has it.

But Kurt is terrified, and the way his body reacts isn't entirely up to him. It's hard for him to be held hostage by something that can end his life and not look at it. His eyes water with the effort of staying open, but then he blinks, and his eyes flick down to the gun pointed at them. When his eyes travel back up, the man has trained the barrel on him.

"So, you fuck him?" the man says, shifting feet again. "The two of you fuck each other?"

Sebastian sucks in a deep breath.

"Take the wallet…" he says again, hoping to derail the man's train of thought.

"That's sick," the man spits. His shifting feet kick the wallet and Kurt's heart slams to a stop.

He kicked the wallet.

He doesn't carry about the money anymore.

He's got a gun.

"You sick fucks!" The man takes a step forward and Sebastian pushes Kurt back farther behind him. "What…what's wrong with you, man?"

Kurt panics, sure that Sebastian is going to come out with some witty remark, something angry, something that will provoke the man, but not for a single moment does he consider running and leaving Sebastian alone.

"You're right," Sebastian agrees. "We're sick. We're sick, and we should go get help. So you just take that wallet and go, and we'll go somewhere and get some help."

Kurt is stunned by this side of Sebastian – calm under pressure and willing to do or say anything to save his life…but not just his life, _their_ lives.

Sebastian is trying to save Kurt's life, possibly at the expense of his own - keeping Kurt behind his body, blocking him from the gun, knowing that at any moment the man can kill him.

At this point, he probably _will_ kill them.

The man is right on them, stopped a foot from them. Kurt can't bring his eyes to leave his face – pockmarked and filthy, matted hair stuck to his cheeks and sparsely grown scruff around his chin. There's an aura of desperation surrounding him and not a hint of humanity in his broken stare.

Then Sebastian says something that renders Kurt entirely useless.

"Look," he says, not betraying a single thread of his calm, "if you have to shoot someone - fine. Shoot me. Let my friend go."

The gunman's face goes completely blank.

"Sebastian…" Kurt whispers, slipping a hand into his.

"Hey!"

The yell comes from a man who has turned onto their sidewalk and sees Kurt and Sebastian being held at gunpoint. The gunman flinches, his attention momentarily drawn away from his two victims. Sebastian sees his chance, and in a move bred from his need to protect Kurt, he shoves Kurt to the sidewalk while simultaneously grabbing for the gun.

"Oomph! Sebastian!" Kurt screams. His cry joins the sound of feet running toward them, scuffling, cursing, muffled groans of pain, the snap of something that sounds like a large, dry branch, but Kurt realizes is probably a bone.

The gunman screams.

More people call out to them.

The gun goes off.

Kurt hears it ring in his ears. It sounds closer than it originally seemed. He can't see Sebastian, but he imagines he's been shot. He imagines Sebastian dead – the love he would never have for his own, dead. He hyperventilates. All those coffee dates, all those dinners they ate together. How many walks in the park, movies watched, nights spent on one another's couch, and Kurt never outright told Sebastian he loved him? Kurt is such a fool, and that foolishness wants to strangle him. He tries to stand, to see if Sebastian's alright, but he falls onto the concrete and the world goes black.

Sebastian feels the bullet enter his shoulder. He feels the pressure from the impact. He feels the sear on his skin. He feels muscles separate and sting while nerves go completely numb. One shot seems to tear apart arteries and flesh, but the bullet doesn't stop there. He registers it moving further into his chest as he falls away from the gunman and onto the ground. He wonders when it will stop. He wonders if he'll live.

He wonders if he'll get the chance to tell Kurt everything he truly feels.

He's been stupid. He realizes it now. Blind and stupid. Maybe finding his soulmate _will_ happen over time, but that doesn't mean he can't love now, while he has the chance.

He loves Kurt. He _loves_ him. He should have told him a million times. Every day. A million times a day.

Why did he have to get shot to figure that out?

He blinks once and sees two men grab the asshole with the gun and drag him away.

He blinks again and sees a crowd of people surround him, feels someone take his pulse, hears a woman yell to her companion, "Call 9-1-1!"

He blinks again, and suddenly he sees the crowd from a distance. All of these people – where the fuck were they before? A few of them break away from the cluster and run towards him.

"Are you alright?" a young man asks.

"What?" Sebastian asks, shaking his head.

"Are you alright?" another young man repeats, holding out a hand to help him to his feet.

The first man slaps the second.

"Don't make him stand!" he scolds. "He might have a concussion!"

A wave of nausea swirls through him, and the whole world shifts to the left before settling back into place.

What the fuck is going on?

Sebastian slowly rises to his feet, with barely any effort, his wounded arm miraculously healed, though his head is threatening to spin off his shoulders. He looks at the two faces staring at him, and beyond them the crowd – so many people gathered, the gunman pinned by the two men to a car, ambulances and police cars screeching around the corner.

Coming for him? He was shot, but he doesn't have a scratch.

He looks down at his hands and his stomach flips.

Not his hands. Not his shoes. Not his clothes.

"Kurt?" he mumbles. Then the scurry of thoughts and feelings that aren't entirely his own fall and click in his muddled brain and everything becomes clear.

Kurt is _the one_.

Sebastian's soulmate.

The man he's meant to love and have for the rest of his life.

Trapped in a body that is fighting to stay alive.


	2. Chapter 2

Sirens blare, shattering a calm and peaceful night to pieces.

Numerous cars round the corner. Lights spin and spiral as they approach, bouncing off the brick buildings and the people all around – blue, white, and red, blinding and eerie, casting disquieting shadows that stretch long and dysmorphic along the walls.

_It's a dream_, Sebastian convinces himself as the shadows flash and disappear and then flash again, as faces jumble together within the dark and the light. _A horrible, agonizing nightmare –a manifestation of my anxiety at the possibility of losing Kurt to some stupid soulmate. It wouldn't be the first time. I'll wake up in my room, and it'll be the start of a brand new day._

Sebastian blinks, trying to make the lights and the cars and the people evaporate back into his head so he can put this dream behind him and get on with his life.

But everything stays firmly locked in place – the people, the buildings, the loud chirping noise as the officers try to clear the street.

The crowd of curious onlookers and good Samaritans disperse with the arrival of the police and EMTs. The police arrest the gunman pinned by the two men and take him into custody. He kicks and screams in Sebastian's direction, calling him a sick fuck a few more times before they shove him into the backseat of an awaiting squad car. More officers gather up witnesses by the curb to be questioned. They stand in a single, straight line, looking nervously over at where his body lays, still and unresponsive.

Sebastian observes it all from a distance, up until the surreal moment when he watches his own body loaded onto a gurney and rolled towards an ambulance. Knowing that Kurt is locked inside his unconscious body awakens something inside him, and his feet start to move.

"Wait!" he calls to the EMTs rushing away with his body…and his soulmate. "Wait! That's my soulmate! That's my Kurt!"

_My Kurt_. Those words send a rush of heat over the skin he's trapped in, despite all the heartache. He had whispered those words in the dark so many times, wanting them to be true. Speaking them out loud, even in Kurt's voice - there is something magical about them.

The EMTs don't stop, but one looks back over his shoulder at the man running up behind them.

"This man is your soulmate?" he asks as the others load Sebastian's body into the ambulance.

"Yes," Sebastian says, nodding emphatically. "Yes, that's Kurt…in my body. I'm Sebastian."

The EMT looks at him, his face oddly blank. He glances at his associate, who has stopped midway while climbing into the ambulance, an equally blank look on his face.

"So, your name is Sebastian," the first man asks, pulling out a small tablet and stylus from his pocket, "but you're in your soulmate's body. And the man on the gurney is your soulmate…"

"Kurt," Sebastian supplies. "Kurt Hummel."

"And he's in your body," the EMT clarifies, entering the information on the pad.

"Yes." Sebastian glances anxiously at the ambulance, and then at the other EMT, wondering why they don't take this information down on the way to the hospital. Kurt desperately needs medical care. That should be obvious, but everything seemed to stop dead at his revelation, and now, everyone is stuck.

"How long have you been swapped?"

The EMT finally reads the anguished expression on the face of the man in front of him, and gestures for Sebastian to climb into the rear of the ambulance.

"Uh, about ten minutes, maybe," Sebastian answers, pulling himself up the step and climbing in. He takes a seat on the bench beside the gurney.

"You mean…you guys switched?" the EMT asks, knocking on the panel behind the driver to get them moving. "Just now? When you got shot?"

"Yeah," Sebastian says. He looks down at his own face – unmoving, deceptive in its tranquility. Sebastian was right. This bodyswap thing _is_ creepy for all of about a minute. He looks at his own face, unconscious, with Kurt somewhere inside. Sebastian sees him – coloring his features, embedded in the lines and creases of his skin, imprinting on him from the center of his being out.

It's not entirely Kurt, but it's not entirely Sebastian either.

It's them. The two of them becoming one person. Whole.

He's stolen this moment while he waits for more questions, but curiously the silence in the ambulance has continued on. He looks up and sees the two EMTs exchange looks, _significant_ looks, looks that obviously convey more than they're letting on.

"Why?" Sebastian asks. "What aren't you guys telling me?"

The first EMT smiles quickly while the second continues to monitor Kurt's vitals.

"Nothing," he says. "I just have to ask."

And that's the last thing he says for the duration of the ride.

It nags at Sebastian's mind, but he brushes it aside. It's not his biggest concern right now.

They speed off through the city, winding along empty streets on their way to the hospital. Sebastian's eyes never move from his face. He doesn't speak, but in his head he pleads with Kurt.

_Please, baby. Please, wake up. Just look at me. Please._

By the time they reach the hospital, Kurt still hasn't woken.

The ambulance pulls to a stop in front of the ER, and through the back window Sebastian can see a medical team waiting to receive them. The EMTs throw the doors open and pull the gurney out with an urgency that in no way equaled how they loaded Kurt in.

Sebastian can hear splintered bits of conversation as they roll his body away – nothing definitive, not even a complete sentence, but a singular point of interest becomes immensely clear. It has bounced back and forth between technicians to the nurses and from doctor to doctor as they head down the hallway – that Kurt and Sebastian switched right when Sebastian got shot.

The gurney flies through several sets of double doors with the entire team pushing it along until they reach a set of thick, silver doors with the words AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY painted in tall, black letters across the width of both of them. The doors open automatically as they approach. Sebastian races to catch up but is intercepted by an older nurse right outside the double doors. She stands in his way and puts her hands up to his chest to stop him.

"Mr. Smythe?" she says, her voice light but authoritative.

Sebastian peeks over her head, trying to maneuver around her, but she anticipates his moves and blocks his path. The last member of the medical team runs through the double doors and they close, sealing Sebastian out.

He glares down at the nurse in front of him.

"My soulmate…"

"Will be prepped for surgery immediately," the nurse says firmly, leaving no room for argument, "but I need to take _your_ vitals right now."

Sebastian should have expected this. The way everyone keeps harping over their bodyswap is unnerving, especially the way they seem intent on keeping him in the dark. He has an unsettling feeling that everyone around him knows something that he should know as well.

As soon as he can, he's pulling out Kurt's iPhone and hopping online to find out.

He follows the nurse to an examination room and takes a seat while she steps out into the hallway to consult with a colleague. More whispering ensues - more not-so-subtle glances his way. He rolls his eyes and taps Kurt's feet, obnoxiously making it clear that he's not too copacetic with waiting. When the nurse returns, she subjects him to a longer examination than he had envisioned – along with his vitals she orders his blood drawn, a cheek swab, and an allergy test. He doesn't care what else they have to stick him with or what other bodily fluids they need to take, as long as they do it quickly and get it over with so he can sit somewhere and worry in peace.

Mentally, he takes that back.

Kurt's hair. He can't let anyone touch Kurt's hair.

Then suddenly Sebastian laughs. The fact that protecting Kurt's precious hair popped to the forefront of his mind shows him just how much of Kurt is seeping into his psyche. When the thought dissolves away and he comes back to the present, the two nurses are staring at him with questioning eyes.

"You had to be there," he says, waving a hand in front of his face, thinking that he needs to tell Kurt about this. He'll more than likely laugh his gorgeous ass off. Sebastian catches a glimpse of Kurt's pale skin and the hospital band wrapped around his wrist. He stops laughing. He brings the hand back down to his lap, hiding it from view.

The nurse who separated him from Kurt smiles at him.

"If you follow me, I'll take you down to the waiting room," she says.

Sebastian stands, with every movement appreciating Kurt's body, his fluidity, his inherent grace. It's in every cell of him, it effuses from every pore. There is no awkwardness at all in the way Kurt moves, and even though Sebastian is not Kurt (Sebastian is still getting used to the ins and outs of managing Kurt's body) it's not as difficult a process as he thought it would be. He likes being inside Kurt's body.

It feels safe.

It feels like home.

Sebastian follows the nurse out of the exam room, expecting to be led to the large, hectic ER waiting room that they had raced through to get here. He looks at the room as they pass it, with rows and rows of chairs, people seated almost on top of each other as they occupy each one, parents with fussy children draped uncomfortably in their laps, adults sitting beside relatives in wheelchairs…some people all alone. They all stare ahead – at the TV playing the news, at the outdated magazines, at each other, at the walls.

"Then what is this?" Sebastian asks, gesturing with a nod of Kurt's head.

"The waiting room I'm taking you to is especially for soulmates," she explains. "It's a little quieter than sitting out here in general population."

Quiet.

Sebastian likes the idea of quiet.

This hospital, like so many others Sebastian has been to, is a labyrinth of elevators and hallways, leading you around in circles to everywhere other than the place you want to be. If you don't work there, you seem to need a cryptic pirate treasure map to navigate to the different rooms.

Sebastian wants to be with Kurt, but that's not going to happen. Not yet.

The further they walk, the quieter the halls become. Few people pass them by. This wing of the hospital seems deserted. It's calm, but an off-putting calm.

Finding his soulmate is supposed to be the greatest day of his life.

Today, so far, has been almost anything but.

He shouldn't be here. Kurt shouldn't be here. None of this is right.

To top it off, there's a secret hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, and he doesn't even know what it is.

Down at the end of a long, empty hall Sebastian sees a door – the oubliette where he's about to be dumped and, he fears, forgotten.

The nurse pats him on the shoulder, a gentle nudge to get him to step inside, and then she leaves, rushing back the way they came.

He doesn't turn to watch her go.

The room is small, which doesn't thrill Sebastian. He wants to hide off in the farthest corner and be effectively ignored until the doctor comes in to tell him what's going on. The waiting room is both soothing and clinical, which Sebastian wouldn't have considered possible if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. The chairs are grey - not Dior grey, but still a soft, appealing grey. Kurt would hate it. _Parochial_, he would say. How a shade of grey could be offensive, Sebastian would never understand. But Kurt did, and that was why someday he was going to be a famous designer. The walls are a cream color, and they reflect the low, golden lights all around so that instead of being harsh and bright, the room glows. It's warm. It's inviting. It's comforting.

It gives off the aura that everything will be alright, even if that is the furthest possible reality.

At this hour of the night, there is practically no one here.

Sebastian sweeps a glance around the room once before he finds a seat inside. A middle-aged man sits by one of the seats closest to the door. He's hunched over with his elbows digging into his knees, sitting so far to the edge of the chair that one swift push would probably send him sprawling to the floor. He's wound tight like a spring. Sebastian can feel his anxiety pulsating off of him. He has his hands folded beneath his chin, but his fingers thrum against the back of his hands like nothing in the world could keep them still. Sebastian wonders how long he's been here. He looks like he's going to leap from his chair any minute.

Further in the room sits a trio of women, eyes shut in meditation. A dark skinned-woman sitting cross-legged on the floor holds hands with a fair skinned, ginger haired woman seated beside her, and between them sits a young girl with unnaturally pale skin, a Mohawk of spiky purple hair, and dressed entirely in black – black net shirt with a black tank underneath, black denim skirt strategically torn and frayed, black and white striped stockings, and black Doc Marten boots. It's the boots Sebastian finds himself fixated on. They're the same boots Kurt wore all the time in high school. It seemed like he had a hundred pair of those clunky things, each in a different color.

Outside of his voice and his tight ass jeans, they were almost his defining feature.

Along with his pale skin…and his prismatic eyes.

Sebastian recants. Kurt didn't have a _defining_ feature. He is and always will be a creature of particular excellence.

He lifts his gaze from the girl's boots and notices her violet eyes staring back at him.

_Those can't be her natural color_, Sebastian thinks.

He nods and she smiles, her eyes following him as he walks, fascinated by something about him as well.

_Oh, please, don't come over here_, Sebastian thinks over and over, finding the most secluded area in the room to sit and officially start his waiting.

The girl watches him sit, and then closes her eyes again, returning to whatever she had been doing before he arrived.

Sebastian looks down at his hands – Kurt's hands. He runs his fingers over them, marveling at the sensations – so alike, but so different. Kurt's hands are smoother, softer, so unblemished and delicate for such a strong, uncompromising man. These are the hands Sebastian wants to hold forever, to the end of the world and back. He can hold them now, but they give him little comfort without Kurt here beside him.

Sebastian can feel eyes watching him, but he chooses to ignore them. He has no reason to acknowledge anyone else's pain but his own.

He's not looking for comradery or a friend, but when he sees the young girl from the coven across the way approach him, he doesn't have the heart to tell her to _fuck off_.

"Hey," the girl says, sitting down in the chair one over from where Sebastian is planted, staring at his clasped hands – his last ditch effort to appear invisible.

"Hey," he says anyway.

"My name's Chelsea," the girl offers, nodding her head of spiked purple hair, silver earrings in several holes swaying as she does.

"I'm…well…I'm Sebastian," Sebastian says, not too eager to explain the specifics of his situation to yet another person.

The girl nods again.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Chelsea asks.

"Not particularly," Sebastian answers, taking a breath in and hiding his face behind his hands. He waits a moment to see if the girl in the nostalgic black Doc Marten boots will go away.

She doesn't.

"Do _you_ want to talk about it?" Sebastian asks, muffled voice behind his hands sounding tight.

He peeks up and Chelsea shrugs.

"I've got it covered." She motions over her shoulder to the two women with their hands linked, eyes closed.

"Are your moms…praying?" Sebastian sits up, feeling slightly guilty that this girl came over to make sure he was alright and he responded by being rude to her.

"Kind of," Chelsea says. "Only one is my mom, and they're asking for blessings from the goddess…and guidance."

Sebastian raises an eyebrow, surprised at how easy the expression is in Kurt's body. In his own, it takes a bit more work and sometimes gives him a small cramp.

"Blessings?" he asks. "Blessings for who? For your dad?"

"Nah," Chelsea says with a shake of her head. "For my soulmate, Lydia. She has leukemia."

Sebastian sits up taller.

"Wait…your soulmate? But you're like…twelve."

"I'm fourteen," she corrects with a giggle. "But we've been soulmates since we were eight."

"I didn't think that was possible."

"It's rare," she says, shrugging with one shoulder, "but it happens."

Sebastian falls silent, unsure what say.

Neither of them are in the best position, but Kurt's odds might be minutely better.

"Do you still not want to talk about it?" she asks.

Sebastian looks at her, wide and honest violet-colored eyes staring at him, tired but patient, and wiser than her age. Sebastian feels a need to talk to someone, and he has a feeling that this girl will understand.

"There's this man," Sebastian starts, "that hated me all through high school, and I tried to hate him back because he wouldn't go out with me. And then one day, we ended up in the same place at the same time, and we knew. We knew without saying a word that we were in love."

Chelsea sighs fondly, her bubble-gum pink lips curling into a smile.

"Was that when you became soulmates?"

"No," Sebastian responds with a grimace. "No, it didn't happen until _years_ later."

Chelsea tilts her head and looks at him with narrowed eyes.

"You don't like the idea of soulmates," she deduces.

"Well, it wasn't a concept that I particularly cared for…"

"Until recently?"

Sebastian nods before he answers.

"Yup."

"Until you got the soulmate you wanted?"

Sebastian's lips struggle not to smile.

"Yes."

"Do you have a picture of him?" Chelsea sits up straight and kicks her heels against the floor, waiting with her hands pressed together.

Sebastian leans in.

"You're looking at him."

Chelsea's smile drops.

"Ouch," she says. She puts a hand to the collar of her shirt and tugs out a half-heart charm on a chain around her neck. She turns the charm over and over in her fingers, and Sebastian can make out the name on the smooth side – _Lydia_.

"Yeah." Sebastian drops back into his seat, one eye following the heart charm as Chelsea folds her hand around it. "I was shot tonight by a mugger. I felt the bullet enter my body, but when I woke up, I was him and he was me. I was trying to protect him, but somehow that all backfired, and now he's in surgery and I'm in here."

Sebastian bows his head. He had hoped that telling his tale would have relieved some of the weight from his shoulders, but now he feels heavier than he did before.

A dainty hand reaches out and covers his.

"I'm really sorry," the girl says softly.

"Yeah," Sebastian says. His first instinct is to scoff at her sympathy, but her words are not empty, and his cynicism is not deserved, especially when this girl is dealing with heartbreak of her own.

"What is your soulmate's name?" Chelsea asks.

"K-Kurt," Sebastian says, and for the first time, his voice almost fails.

"Kurt," she repeats. "We'll ask for blessings from the goddess for your soulmate, too."

"You don't have to," Sebastian laughs dryly.

"You don't believe in a higher power, huh," she says astutely.

"I'm not a big one for faith."

"That's alright." The girl stands up and squeezes his hand. "I have faith enough for both of us."

With a reassuring smile, she returns to her group, sitting back among the two women, who open their eyes and welcome her back to the circle. Chelsea says something Sebastian can't hear, and both women turn their faces to look at him, acknowledging him with their genuine smiles and their shining eyes. They return to their circle and once again, Sebastian is alone.

Over an hour later, Sebastian finally hears the echo of footsteps coming down the hall – the first sign of life since he was deposited here. A doctor walks in, and all eyes in the room turn toward the door.

"Mr. Espinoza?" the doctor calls out.

The man in the seat by the door, who hasn't stopped his obsessive fidgeting, stands from his chair, and the rest of the room returns to their wishing and praying. Out of morbid curiosity, Sebastian listens to the doctor talk to the man who has been on the edge of insanity since he got there. Sebastian has fingers crossed for him. He has this crazy notion that if this man's soulmate comes out okay, that everyone else's soulmate will be alright, too.

It's foolish and naïve, and Kurt probably wouldn't approve, but right now it's all he's got.

"Mr. Espizona…" the tone of the doctor's voice when he says the man's name doesn't sound promising, and the entire room of surreptitious onlookers collectively holds their breath, "it's a girl. Congratulations!"

And with those words, a communal chain lifts, a chain that connected everyone together, and they sigh with relief.

It's a victory for this one man, but it's shared by them all.

"Oh, thank the Lord," the man mutters, crossing himself repeatedly, "and my wife?"

"She's in recovery, but she's going to be just fine," the doctor announces. "You can see her when she wakes up, but let me take you to your daughter."

"Yes," the man says, nodding and grinning, his hands folded over his heart as he holds himself together. He turns to regard the remaining members of the waiting room with a look of joy, but also pity, and Sebastian knows what he's really thinking as he hurries after the doctor and away to his wife.

_He's glad he's no longer one of us._

"One down, two to go," the dark-skinned woman says. Chelsea winks at Sebastian and smiles.

Two hours pass after Mr. Espinoza left, and again the chain settles around them. Hope in the room begins to wane. Chelsea is asleep in Lydia's mother's lap while her own mother paces the floor. She stares at the carpet, following the same route, tracing the geometric pattern with her steps. From the intensity of her gaze, Sebastian can tell she's not just marking time. She's thinking twelve steps ahead.

Sebastian admires that. For over three hours he's been stuck in the moment, and he can't seem to move forward without knowing whether or not Kurt's okay.

More footsteps echo down the hall and another doctor walks in. The woman looks up, but the doctor walks straight for Sebastian, so she keeps up her pacing with her stride unbroken.

Even before the doctor speaks, he smiles, and Sebastian wants to leap into the air.

"Mr. Smythe?" the doctor says, the same way the other doctor had addressed Mr. Espinoza.

"Yes, yes," Sebastian says, not yet used to hearing Kurt's higher-pitched voice speak for him.

"The surgery was a complete success. You are one lucky bastard, Mr. Smythe." The doctor pats him on the shoulder as if they are friends, and Sebastian, who hates that kind of posturing, can't find it in himself to mind. "The bullet managed to miss every major artery, every organ, and lodge in your ribcage. You shattered some bone, but that's all. It's been fixed up and your body is on the mend."

Sebastian's reflex is to bounce on the balls of his feet, which is the way Kurt always reacts to exciting news, and that makes the smile on Sebastian's face grow wider. He turns his head to look at Chelsea, almost needing to share this news with her, but she's still asleep. Her mother sends him a small smile in her stead.

"My. Smythe," the doctor says, pulling his focus back. "Please follow me."

Sebastian walks out the door of the hidden waiting room, and even though his heart sincerely aches for Chelsea, hoping that everything turns out alright for her and Lydia, the same thought that Mr. Espinoza carried out with him crosses his mind.

_Thank God that isn't me anymore._

"So, when can I see Kurt?" Sebastian asks, itching to blow past the doctor and head to his room, to sit by his bedside until he wakes up, to kiss him and tell him how much he loves him.

Everything's going to be alright from now on.

Sebastian would see to it.

Sebastian would take care of Kurt for the rest of his life.

The doctor stops walking. His smile slips, and Sebastian knows it's not going to be that easy.

"Mr. Smythe," he begins, "I'm going to tell you this straight out, because I think right now that's what you need to hear."

Sebastian swallows, preparing for the worst, not even sure what the worst (besides Kurt outright dying) could possibly be.

The doctor fixes Sebastian with intelligent but exhausted brown eyes and takes a cleansing breath.

"We don't know where your soulmate's soul is."


	3. Chapter 3

When Sebastian was six-years-old, his favorite person in the world – his grandmother – died of complications from advanced heart disease. Sebastian always believed that her heart became ill after her soulmate died. He knew that having your soulmate with you, that being with him or her every day, was _that_ important. In the last few days of her life, she told Sebastian not to worry about her because after she died her soul would rise up to the golden gates of heaven, and she would be with her soulmate again.

Sebastian was with his grandmother when she passed away, standing by her bedside. He stared at her body while his mother wept and his father held her hand, but he didn't see anything rise out of her. No apparition, no soul floating up to the heavens. While all the adults consoled one another with the thought that she had joined her true love again in a place where she would never be sick or frail, where she would always be happy and carefree, Sebastian was terrified that they had buried his beloved grandmother with her soul locked inside her body. That idea haunted him. He couldn't sleep for weeks. He would run away, trying to make his way to the cemetery to dig his grandmother up and rescue her soul, but he was always caught before he left the estate.

It took long months of enduring horrible nightmares and running away before he came to terms with the facts of life.

There was no such thing as an immortal soul.

Soulmates were bullshit – not a perfect love chosen for you by the universe, but a biological response to centuries of evolution, leaving humanity in this bizarre dystopian quagmire which nobody understood.

And now, this thing that didn't exist to him, this soul that he didn't believe in, this connection he thought was complete and total crap, has gone missing.

Kurt's soul is missing.

It takes a minute for Sebastian to absorb the doctor's words, and then another minute for him to form a response.

"Wait, wait, wait…back up a minute," Sebastian says, shaking Kurt's head in confusion, "what do you mean, his soul is missing?"

"Come with me, Mr. Smythe," the doctor says, gesturing ahead and leading him down the hallway. "There's something I need you to see."

Another long walk down another hallway, one that Sebastian had allowed himself to hope would take him to his soulmate and the beginning of their lives together. Is this his punishment for not believing, for not wanting a soulmate - to have the universe acknowledge that he and Kurt should be together and then rip him away?

The doctor leads Sebastian to a brightly lit room – painfully bright after the soothing glow of the waiting room. On the walls hang several black X-ray films set inside the frames of light boxes, each X-ray showing a different view of a human brain – _his_ brain. Some areas are starkly defined, some are dark voids.

"Here we have several scans of your brain, Mr. Smythe," the doctor says, pointing to the films with his hand. "We have mapped all the areas where soulmate bodyswap's affect the brain." The doctor indicates the largest void on one of the X-rays. "After a bodyswap, this reservoir here is where we tend to see the most activity."

Sebastian swallows unconsciously as he stares into a kidney-shaped hole of nothing.

_Nothing. There's nothing there._

"To make sure, we took the scan again," the doctor says, cutting in right before Sebastian can ask if the doctors are positive – are they absolutely positive? Did they take the scan over? Did they get a second opinion? Short of cutting open his head and carving up his brain, did they do everything they could do? Did they consult Catholic priests and shamans, or other people who might be able to contact Kurt's spirit if he is wandering about on an alternative celestial plane?

The doctor takes down the first X-rays and puts up new ones.

"We did the scans again using a different machine." The doctor points to the three identical scans hanging side by side by side. Then he runs a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and sighs. Sebastian sees the distress on his face, the physical exhaustion lining his skin, and almost feels sorry for him. If possible, he looks about as broken as Sebastian feels. "I wish I could tell you that this was common, Mr. Smythe. I wish I could tell you that it happens in one out of every hundred cases and we know exactly what to do. Hell, I wish I could tell you that it's rare but at least we've seen it, but I won't lie to you. Never in the history of this hospital have we seen such a disconnect of a soulmate's soul from its host body. Right now, I have colleagues phoning hospitals all over the globe trying to find one case like yours, but for now…"

The doctor's words drift off to that place where there are no answers, just endings.

Sebastian feels the knees fighting desperately to hold him upright wobble. The doctor takes his arm and leads him to a nearby chair, anticipating Sebastian's abrupt need to sit.

"So…what do we do now?" Sebastian asks, the question weak in light of the rage bubbling up from within the body he's trapped in.

This is not how this is supposed to go.

If someone was going to be hurt, in pain, in danger, it was supposed to be him – not Kurt. Sebastian in Sebastian's own body struggling for his life, not Kurt.

Sebastian is lost as to how this could have happened.

"We wait," the doctor says, his response anti-climatic. "We watch and wait and hope, because frankly…" The doctor pauses again, and Sebastian feels that cold apprehension that tells him the worst has yet to be revealed. "We don't know what's going to happen when your time as swapped soulmates is up."

Sebastian sits up straight, gripping the arms of the chair until Kurt's entire body shakes.

"What…what does that mean?" Sebastian asks, finding no comfort in the sound of Kurt's voice speaking his words.

"It means that when you guys switch back, we don't know for sure what's going to happen. Everything could be fine. You both could return to your own bodies and this will all be fixed. That's the best case scenario. Or he could come back, and you could go to where he is now…or there's a possibility you both could disappear."

"Or we both could turn into fucking pink elephants!" Sebastian says in a wavering voice. "You guys don't seem to know anything at all!"

"You're right," the doctor says apologetically. "We don't know anything yet. But we're working on it. I promise you."

Sebastian nods, partially ashamed of his outburst but too devastated by this news to consider recanting. He feels so hopeless the doctor might as well have told him that Kurt is already dead, because Sebastian can't see a way out of this.

The mystical forces he was determined not to believe in have come back to bite him on the ass.

"Can I…" Sebastian looks down at Kurt's hands, at his skin, at the entirety of him, "can I go see him?"

The doctor's smile is a hollow expression of pity.

"Of course."

Sebastian pays no attention to the route that they take to get to Kurt's room. He has the feeling that neither of them are going to be leaving this hospital, so what's the point?

He knows the moment they step off the elevator that they're on the floor with the ICU. It's dreary and grey, and the sound of beeping machinery can be heard even before they go through the locked entryway for staff and family only. He wonders if Lydia might be there somewhere, hooked up to machines, waiting for Chelsea to come say her final good-byes.

It's a horrible thought, but this is a horrible place. He should hope for more for Chelsea and Lydia, but all of his hope has been sucked out of him, and there is none extra to be found here.

"If you need to leave and want to come back, enter this code…" The doctor punches the numbers 3-6-9-1 into the keypad on the wall and the metal doors swing open. He takes Sebastian past a row of beds, each bed shielded by a curtain with a nurse sitting out front. There are no doors anywhere in case a crash cart needs to be rolled in immediately – this much Sebastian knows. He's seen it.

They walk to the farthest end, to the very last curtain.

"Your soulmate is in there," the doctor explains as if it isn't obvious.

Sebastian nods.

"What…what should I do?"

"Try talking to him," the doctor suggests. "Who knows? Maybe he'll hear you."

Sebastian takes a long breath and looks down at Kurt's shoes. Such stylish shoes – Kurt always has such great taste in clothes – but now they have a scuff, and he knows Kurt would kill him right now if he saw them.

Sebastian should start by telling him that. Knowing that his shoes are scuffed up would definitely bring Kurt back from the abyss.

"Do you need a moment to prepare?" the doctor asks.

Sebastian looks up at the doctor's worn out face and rolls Kurt's eyes, hoping he at least managed to get Kurt's bitch face right, and steps through the curtain.

Sebastian thought for sure that he was ready for this, but immediately he realizes he should have taken that moment.

There was no shock in seeing his own body lying there without him in it, even with the addition of the IV lines stuck in his hand and the breathing apparatus on his face. He had seen his body loaded onto a gurney in the street and then into the ambulance. He had ridden beside it, had studied it, had seen the traces of Kurt in his own unconscious face.

But now those traces have vanished. Any hint of Kurt he could see in his features, any new color those bits of his conscious had given him, are gone.

When Sebastian stares at his body, he only sees himself.

No Kurt anywhere.

Sebastian isn't sure if he wants to stand vigil beside his own empty body. The thought sends the bubbling rage that had been slowly simmering inside straight to the surface.

"You know, you're an incredible ass, Kurt Hummel!" he yells from the foot of the bed. He hears the nurse shush him from beyond the curtain, but it doesn't sway him in the slightest. Then the thought of Chelsea in the ICU somewhere makes him rethink, and he starts spitting out his vitriol more quietly. "Always trying to one-up me! You couldn't just let me rescue you this time."

His rant has no effect on the body lying in front of him. The monitors don't change the speed of their beeping, the body in the bed doesn't move. Sebastian raises Kurt's hands to run fingers through his chestnut hair, bunching the strands in his grasp, mussing their perfect design. He paces back and forth, trying to think of something else bitter and hurtful to say. If he pisses Kurt off enough, it could lure him back.

But their time together isn't set in stone. Bodyswaps last on average a week, but they could last longer or less depending on arbitrary circumstances. Kurt could be God-knows-where for a month, or they could switch back any minute. Sebastian doesn't want to spend the time they have berating Kurt, especially since he has yet to tell him that he loves him.

And he should really tell him.

Sebastian walks up beside the body on the bed.

"We're fucked, Kurt," Sebastian says, reaching out a hand to grab the one resting above the sheets. "We're really fucked. I don't know what to do." Sebastian chuckles. "And talking about fucked, think about all the incredible sex we could have been having, Kurt! If you had just given in all those times…all that time wasted!"

Sebastian wanted Kurt, but that didn't mean he spent his nights alone. For a while, he indulged in a long string of random relationships in an effort at pushing any thought of Kurt out of his mind, but he couldn't make those relationships work. Every man he met he immediately compared to Kurt, and not a single one of them measured up. So they all became one-night stands - him masturbating with another man's body in an effort to fuck any thought of Kurt away. But one night, after rolling out of some guy's bed and heading for the door he realized that he might accidentally stumble upon his soulmate that way.

He ended the practice full stop.

Kurt knew about them, all of them, all those men, and he still stuck by him.

Kurt never gave in to those urges. He never slept with anyone. He stuck to his romantic ideals that the perfect man was out there somewhere, saving himself for Kurt.

Sebastian was far from the perfect man, and he didn't save himself. Sebastian was selfish and monumentally stupid.

He doesn't deserve Kurt.

"Why, Kurt?" Sebastian asks, holding his hand. "Why did this happen now? After all the times we touched each other, all the hand holding, sleeping together on your couch? Why did the universe pick now? You're the one who believes in all this spiritual, mystic-y bullshit. Well, I'm ready to listen. Just come back. Wake up and explain it all to me because I'm having a hard time understanding how the universe thinks we deserve this."

Sebastian looks left and right for a chair. He sees one not too far off, but not willing to let go of the hand he's holding, he reaches out with a leg, hooks a foot around the base of it, and drags it across the floor with an unpleasant scraping sound. He drops down into it and simply stares. He stares at his body, stares at his face, staring at his eyes, praying for some miracle to open them.

After several long hours or sporadic confessions and quiet pleading, his prayers remain unanswered.

Sebastian thinks about Chelsea sitting in her circle, exercising her belief to an invisible goddess, and him mentally mocking her. Now here he was doing the same. The only difference is that little girl always believes. His belief is driven by desperation. When this is over he'll either be cursing God or going back to being apathetic about the subject, depending on how his prayer is handled.

No wonder no one out there is listening to him.

Kurt has said it a million times, and he's right. Sebastian _is_ an insufferable ass.

In the long hours he waits, Sebastian thinks about calling Kurt's dad. He pulls out Kurt's iPhone from his pocket several times, but stops when he tries to imagine how that conversation would go.

"Hello, is this Kurt's dad? No, this isn't Kurt, this is Kurt's soulmate in Kurt's body. Yes, that's wonderful. Actually, no, you can't talk to your son. Well, I was shot and now he's trapped in my body, and the whole of medical science has no idea where he is…yes, it was nice meeting you, too."

Sebastian groans, resting against the cold metal frame of the bed in front of him. This whole thing is beginning to sound like a bad SciFi movie - something lame and implausible, but slightly entertaining to watch because you're absolutely certain it's never going to happen in real life. Right now he can hear tons of jeering movie watchers moaning at the stupidity and throwing popcorn at the screen.

_Popcorn_.

The thought makes Kurt's stomach growl, but Sebastian refuses to leave his seat. He looks up to check the time on the clock. ICU has no windows, and neither did the waiting room he was in for most of the night, so he doesn't have the benefit of the sun to remind him what time of day it is. He catches sight of the time, and then the whole room shifts, the walls sliding back and forth like a wave before coming into focus.

10:33.

Sebastian knows it's in the morning, not the evening.

He feels woozy from all the running around and the worrying. He either needs sleep or food, or else he's going to pass out.

He doesn't want to sleep for about a hundred different reasons, but among them is the very real fear that he might not wake up.

"Alright," he says, kissing the hand he's been holding onto like a lifeline, "I'm going to go get something to eat. I'll just be a second. I promise."

He stands up slowly, feeling unsteady on the feet beneath him. He backs away from the bed, hoping that any second Kurt will open his eyes and stop him, but he has no such luck. Sebastian passes through the privacy curtain, acknowledges the nurse sitting outside of it with a small nod, and heads for the double doors at the end of the hallway. He doesn't want to go all the way to the cafeteria, and leaving the hospital is not an option. He vaguely remembers seeing a vending machine somewhere in the vicinity and tries to search it out.

He walks all the way to the elevators and back before he finds them – two lone machines standing side by side, one selling snacks, the other coffee. Sebastian wants to do a tiny dance when he sees the coffee machine, but then he remembers - Kurt tossed his wallet to robber. He pats down his pockets once to make sure but finds it stuffed into the coat pocket – not in the back pocket Kurt was struggling to get it out of. Sebastian must have picked it up, or maybe someone handed it to him. Either way, he isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He opens the wallet to look for some singles, avoiding Kurt's driver's license or the few pictures he has stuck in there of the two of them. He fishes out a few worn dollar bills and prays they'll work. He goes for the coffee first. Kurt is a non-fat mocha person, but right now Sebastian needs his coffee straight-up black.

_Sorry, babe, _he thinks to himself.

The candy machine is another matter, and Sebastian grins as he looks over the selections. He knows that Kurt would rather be caught dead than eat something from a vending machine, but if pressed into it, he'd choose something ultra-healthy – a granola bar made with twigs and berries, held together by a drop of honey, made by self-sustaining bees on a family farm in California. Meanwhile, Sebastian would go straight for a Snickers bar, but Kurt would never speak to him again if he knew that he had put partially hydrogenated soybean oil into his body.

"Alright, babe," Sebastian mutters out loud, putting the dollar into the machine and buying the only healthy thing he can find, "you win this round."

The granola bar is gone before Sebastian makes his way back to the ICU. He enters the code the doctor showed him into the keypad on the wall and the doors swing open. He avoids making eye contact with other patients and nurses, needing to be alone in his head as he tries to think of what he's going to say next to Kurt.

He already knows what he should say. He should tell Kurt that he loves him.

That's the only important thing he has left to say, and he should say it a thousand times – once for every time he thought it and didn't say it - but he doesn't want to say those words to his own sleeping face.

Each step that brings him back to that privacy curtain and the bed hidden behind it is pure heartbreak for Sebastian, because Kurt isn't there, and staring into that face is simply Sebastian staring into the inevitability of his own future.

To his right, another privacy curtain slides open and a nurse steps quickly through. In that second, Sebastian catches a glimpse of chunky black boots and spiky purple hair. The nurse walks off down the hallway and out the double doors, and as far as Sebastian can tell, Chelsea is sitting on the other side of the curtain alone. Sebastian walks up to the curtain, keeping an eye out for the nurse.

"Chelsea?" he whispers against the fabric.

"Come in," a solemn voice calls back. Sebastian opens the curtain a sliver and sneaks into the room. Sebastian was right. It's only Chelsea. Her mother and Lydia's mother aren't there. Over in the bed lies a young girl asleep, like Sebastian's body lies asleep, but with numerous IVs sticking in her arm, a half dozen more beeping monitors and machines, and a much larger breathing mask covering her face. She looks years younger than Chelsea – her face peaceful in sleep. It seems to be Chelsea who carries all the worry, and it shows in the purple bags beneath her eyes and her sagging shoulders.

Chelsea doesn't look up to greet him, only puts a hand on the chair beside her, offering him a seat.

"She needs a bone marrow transplant," Chelsea says without being asked, her words accompanied by a heavy sigh, "and she needs it, like, yesterday."

"Ah," Sebastian says, occupying the chair beside Chelsea. "That sucks."

"Yeah," she agrees with a bob of her head.

"Well, at least you know where your soulmate is," Sebastian says. "They can't seem to find mine."

Chelsea peeks up at Sebastian sideways, furrowing her brow.

"But…isn't he…"

"They have my body," he explains. "There just doesn't seem to be a soul in it."

"Oh," Chelsea says softly, her eyes drifting back to whatever spot on the floor she had been staring at when Sebastian walked in. "I'm…I'm sorry. That's…I've never heard of that before."

"Yeah," Sebastian chuckles dryly. "Take a number. It seems that no one has."

Chelsea nods. Sebastian slouches. The misery in the air grows with every tense breath the two take.

"So, she needs a bone marrow transplant," Sebastian repeats, trying to restart the conversation. He furrows his brow, too. "But, you're her soulmate. Doesn't that automatically make you a perfect match?"

"Yeah, the whole imprint on the DNA thing, but our insurance won't cover the procedure," she explains, kicking her feet, knocking the base with the heels of her boots. "Some stipulation about underage donors. We'd have to pay out of pocket and we don't have that kind of money."

Sebastian chews on Kurt's cheek while he thinks - a habit of Sebastian's that Kurt hates.

"What about her mom?" he asks. He's not comfortable prying but he needs to know that there's a solution available – that this is going to turn out alright for them.

It just has to.

They both deserve a happy ending. At least one of them should get it.

"Her mom has some rare genetic disorder," Chelsea says, sounding more and more despondent with each word. "She can't donate, and my mom's not even close."

Sebastian sits back in the chair and watches Chelsea from the corner of his eye. He doesn't want to focus on the girl lying in the bed. It feels inappropriate. Chelsea stops kicking her legs and sighs again, sinking into her chair, looking smaller than before.

"Maybe this is the way it was planned from the beginning," Chelsea says. "Maybe the universe knew we weren't going to be together that long and that's why we swapped so early."

That confession seems to take every last breath out of her.

"Come on," Sebastian says, bumping her with an elbow, "don't give up faith. Didn't you say you had faith enough for both of us?"

Chelsea nods and tries to smile, but her expression doesn't change.

Sebastian has an impulse to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. She had been such a bright light for him, with these beliefs she has that he doesn't, like Kurt and his belief in soulmates when Sebastian couldn't care less. Now that light is slowly extinguishing – just like Kurt.

He wants to shake her and beg that light to come back.

No, he wants to shake his body and beg Kurt's light to come back.

Sebastian takes her hand in his and squeezes gently.

"How do you think this deity thing works?" he asks. "I mean, you pray and pray, and you ask for a miracle…how do you think it gets delivered? Did you think the goddess was going to come down in radiant, sunlit robes and lay hands on your soulmate? Or maybe Lydia was just going to wake up all of a sudden and be cured?"

"I don't know," Chelsea says with a defeated shrug.

"I don't know either," Sebastian admits. "But then again, I don't believe. Not like you, not like Kurt. But I think that if I were a higher power, I wouldn't grant the wishes and the miracles myself. I would put people together here on Earth who could help one another. You know, teach the whole humanity lesson and shit." Chelsea laughs, probably at his cursing, but she still doesn't look too convinced.

"So, you're saying someone's going to come along out of the blue and help us?" she asks, still not understanding.

"Exactly," Sebastian replies, reaching into Kurt's pocket and pulling out his iPhone. "I think you and I are here to help each other."

Chelsea raises her violet eyes and stares at him, her lips quirked with disbelief.

"How am I supposed to help you?" she asks.

"_You_ are going to keep praying to that goddess of yours that my soulmate wakes up," Sebastian says, "and I promise that I'll try to get your prayers answered. Deal?"

Chelsea gawks at the man with the phone in his hand and the strangely determined look in his eye, and begins to hope again. She reaches for the charm hanging from the chain around her neck and smiles.

"Deal."


	4. Chapter 4

Kurt had a dream once while he was in college - around the same time that he and Sebastian had just become good friends - that he was making love to his soulmate. The specific details, the room he was in, and his soulmate's face were blurred, but the _feel_ was there – sweat dripping from his soulmate's skin to his own, hands gripping his thighs, nails biting in just enough to fuel his need, and the body all around him perfect in every way, as unoriginal as that sounds.

There are elements of a soulmate that are undeniable – indisputable – and Kurt knows them by heart. Smell, for one – the way the scent of that one perfect person calls to you, the way it fills every cell in your body, replacing oxygen in the blood, making your heart swell. Texture of the skin beneath the run of your fingertips is another, especially when aroused, when all your nerves ignite and touch becomes intensified, more potent. Taste is the third and probably one of the most important. It's instinctual, animal, and it makes you crave those things that taste similar, although nothing in the world tastes as incredible as your soulmate's kiss on your lips, their skin beneath your tongue, their words in your mouth.

_Nothing _tastes that good.

In Kurt's fantasy, his soulmate tasted like bourbon and peppermint. He smelled like leather and new fallen rain. He felt like rose petals against Kurt's skin – a sensation that imprinted itself on his neck, the palms of his hands, his chest, between his thighs...

At the end of the dream, when Kurt had cum embarrassingly hard in his boxer-briefs alone in his own bed, he caught a brief glimpse of his lover's face, but all he saw for certain were his startling green eyes.

Kurt only knew one man with green eyes like those, but he pushed that aside. It wasn't something he was prepared to think about.

That same day, after Kurt had let his amazing dream dissolve into the ether, Sebastian met him for lunch. Sebastian rushed into Kurt's arms and gave him a hug (they had just begun to do that with each other) and Kurt, knocked off his feet by the enthusiasm of his friend, breathed in deep.

Sebastian smelled like his brand new leather jacket; his hair was wet from a sudden afternoon sun-shower, and filled Kurt's nostrils with its fresh, clean scent. As a tease, Sebastian took Kurt's hand and kissed it. The brush of his lips felt like the velvet of rose petals as they slid over Kurt's skin.

Kurt's heart stopped beating. Or it started. There wasn't a clear enough distinction for him to tell.

Kurt and Sebastian became closer after that – not because of the dream (Kurt never told Sebastian about it). Possibly they became closer in spite of it, because Kurt wanted to prove it wrong, but the more time they spent together, the more Kurt dared to hope. He had fallen for Sebastian, in a cliché, bittersweet Lifetime movie way. He knew that becoming Sebastian's soulmate was a longshot, but he wanted it more than he had wanted almost anything else in his life. In his mind, as childish as it was, he had already claimed Sebastian as his own.

Kurt was a practical man. He knew realistically that Sebastian probably wasn't _the_ _one. _They had held hands, shared hugs, danced, and kissed in that chaste way that dear friends do, and yet – nothing. No bodyswap, no change.

Kurt knew that spending time with Sebastian was absolutely breaking his heart, but Kurt had no regrets about being heartbroken over Sebastian Smythe.

The one regret he did have was also the last thought in his mind before he blacked out on the cold street with the sharp stab of blistering pain blazing through his chest - he never got the chance to find out if Sebastian tastes like bourbon and peppermint.

In his heart, Kurt knows he does. He always knew.

When Kurt wakes, the whole world is black.

Not black - dark.

Darker than dark.

It is nothing.

He feels formless, like mist. He's floating and swirling, drifting this way and that with barely a thought, though he has no idea where all of this drifting and floating will actually take him if he lets it. But he feels care free. He wants to fly away, but he's being held down. Invisible tendrils tug him back and won't let him go. Every time he tries to escape his tethers, a voice brings him back.

It isn't a voice that he hears - it's a voice that he feels. With every word, it wraps around his wrists, his chest, his ankles. It sends a shiver of silver light through his entire body, and for a single millisecond of unrecorded time, he can kind of see.

The silver light comes in waves, rippling through the air, outlining things that he knows even if he can't see them clearly – a chair here, a leg there, something that looks kind of like half a heart on a chain – and weaving in and out of these images, the voice ties him down.

It all becomes minutely clearer when the voice says his name.

Kurt tries to speak to the ripple of light, but nothing he says makes any sense. It's gobbledygook, nonsense, invisible sound. He only hears it in his head because there's nothing around him for it to bounce off of and travel back to him.

"Hello?" he calls out, hoping to get the owner of the voice to hear him, needing to let somebody know that he's there – wherever _there_ is – and he needs help. "Hello? Can anybody hear me?"

When he speaks, there is no silver ripple of light, no starkly illuminated objects to hint as to where he is, and after yelling himself hoarse, he stops.

He's caught in an existentialist nightmare, like in Jean-Paul Sartre's _No Exit_, except in Kurt's hell, there's no one around to torture him.

"Hello?" a voice calls back from the void.

_Or so he thought…_

"Hello?" Kurt calls out anxiously. "Can you hear me?"

The voice in the darkness giggles.

"Don't yell," she says. "_Think_ your answers."

Kurt frowns at her response and the cartoonish situation he's trapped in.

"Did I say something funny?" he thinks, feeling ridiculous but willing to give anything a try.

"No," the voice says, sounding louder, coming closer, "you just weren't making any sense."

"Who are you?" Kurt asks, suddenly regretting attracting attention to himself. He has no idea who this person is or why she knows these things that he doesn't. If he's stuck in his head, or Sebastian's head, who is this little girl, and why is she here?

If the manifestation of his inner self-conscience turns out to be a pre-teenage girl, Kurt is going to be royally pissed.

If this is someone that happens to exist in the mire of Sebastian's self-conscience, however, Kurt is going to be deeply disturbed.

"My name is Lydia," she says. She sounds like she's standing right beside him but Kurt can't see her. It's very alarming.

"Kurt," Kurt says in a brief introduction. "I can't see you. Can you see me?"

"No," Lydia says simply.

"Why not?" Kurt asks.

"Because we're not really here," Lydia explains. "Well, that's not entirely true. We're here, obviously, but your senses are attached to your body, so you can't use them here."

"Well, that sucks," Kurt says with a sigh of defeat.

"No, that's good," Lydia insists. "If your senses were with you, then you'd be dead."

Kurt wants to believe the girl, but he's still suspicious.

"How do you know this?" he asks.

"I come here a lot, unfortunately," she says, the tone of her voice dropping from amused to solemn.

"I'm sorry," Kurt says. "I didn't know."

"I know," she says, but she doesn't sound any cheerier.

"If you don't mind me asking, where is _here_, exactly?"

"It's kind of like an oubliette," the girl says. "It's a place of holding – a waiting room."

Kurt sighs.

"Oubliettes are where people are put to be forgotten," he says.

"Possibly," the girl agrees, and then laughs when three successive silver ripples flash through his body, lighting a chair, a boot, a cell phone, "but I'm pretty sure no one has forgotten you."

Kurt doesn't say anything; his silence speaks for him.

"You don't believe that, do you?" Lydia asks, but it's not really a question.

"Well, I'm supposed to be in my soulmate's body right now, but I'm not. I'm here. So he rejected me." The next four words take every bit of strength he has to admit. "He sent me here."

Kurt doesn't need to see Lydia's face to read her expression.

"It's not as easy as they make it seem, is it?" she asks. Kurt knows she's shaking her head at him.

"Wha-what do you mean?"

"Well, when they tell us about soulmates, it's in that uber-sappy romantic way, like cheesy romance novels with people making out on the covers, but the truth is much different. Having a soulmate is complicated. Messy."

Kurt is stunned by her perception, but he's not following her reasoning.

"I don't…I don't understand."

"My soulmate's name is Chelsea," Lydia says. "We were born in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, attended the same afterschool programs. We gravitated toward each other. She was my best friend. And then, on her eighth birthday, she touched my hand while we were playing tag and zap! We switched. We were soulmates."

"That's…unusual," Kurt says, a little envious at how easy it sounds.

"But it's not that simple," Lydia says as if reading his thoughts, "because there are a lot of things we can't do yet - things that bond soulmates together. We've been soulmates for the past six years, and I know it sounds like the stars lined up for us, but our journey is different than yours. It's harder in some ways, too."

Lydia doesn't have to say it outright for him to understand.

Soulmates bond by being together, interacting with one another, living their lives side-by-side…

…but also by making love. That physical contact, that emotional connection.

Lydia and Chelsea are soulmates, but there's a connection still missing.

That's how Kurt feels about himself where Sebastian is concerned - like something is missing.

"I never thought I was enough for him," Kurt says, thinking back to those times when Sebastian spent night after night after night in different men's beds. "I wanted him. I loved him. I knew he loved me, but…I didn't think he wanted this. He always said he didn't need a soulmate."

"I think..." Lydia starts, reaching out to Kurt with her mind and touching him gently, "that your soulmate didn't reject you. I think that you put yourself here because you're afraid of what real rejection might feel like."

She's right. Kurt can take a lot in the way of rejection. He lived through being turned down for solo after solo, role after role. He shrugged off his first rejection from NYADA and tried again. When the first design line he pitched to Isabelle was flushed by her boss, Anna, Kurt picked himself up and reworked it. But Sebastian…he can't take rejection from Sebastian.

Kurt looks around him – at the nothing surrounding him – and he feels lost. Wherever he is, it's his own personal prison. Only he has the key to breaking out of it.

Except he has no clue where to start.

The silver ripple runs down his body again and he sees three people talking together. One of them looks like him, and he's hugging a woman.

"What's with the silver light?" he asks as another ripple flashes by brighter.

"Yeah, that happens when your soulmate talks about you," Lydia says. "It's because you're connected."

Another ripple, and he sees the three people hugging altogether. It's his body, but with Sebastian inside. Sebastian talking about him, thinking about him.

"Is there any way for me to get out of here?" Kurt asks, done with being trapped by self-doubt and ready to return to his soulmate.

Lydia stalls a moment, and Kurt knows that can't be good.

"I'm not sure how that's going to work for you exactly," she says.

"What do you mean?" Kurt asks, slightly panicked. "How do _you_ get out?"

"Well, it's the drugs that the doctors give me that help me visit here," Lydia says, "especially during surgery, which is where I am now. I leave when they start to wake me up. But you brought yourself here on your own. I think you have to figure out a way."

Kurt doesn't know how he knows, but Lydia begins to pull away, and the thought of being alone in this place terrifies him.

"Wait!" Kurt screams in his head. "Where are you going? Don't leave me!"

"I'm sorry, Kurt," Lydia says, "I don't have a choice. They're bringing me out of surgery. Once the anesthesia starts to wear off, I'm going to go back."

"What kind of cockamamie surgery only takes twenty minutes?" Kurt asks, confused, fighting to keep her there, to keep his one connection to sanity.

"Kurt," she chuckles, "we've been talking for hours. Time has no meaning here, so I would find a way back soon, before..."

The girl's voice dies before her sentence is finished.

"What…what does that mean?" he begs into the darkness, but it's too late. The girl is gone and the overwhelming silence returns.

Hysteria starts to set in. Minutes are really hours. Time has no meaning. He could blink a proverbial eye and waste his whole life here. _He_ put himself there, he can find a way to leave.

He has to find a way.

The ripples start again, shooting over his body one after another, shining in the dark, leading his way. A bed, a body, the back of a bowed head. Sebastian in his body. It had to be, talking to his own empty body, trying to bring Kurt back.

"So many times…should have told you…you Kurt…always you…would have moved the stars…know it sounds cheesy…waiting for you forever…I love you…"

_I love you._

_I love you._

Sebastian keeps talking and Kurt keeps listening, grabbing at all the words that touch him, but the ones he holds on to closest are the ones he repeats in his head until they almost don't make sense anymore.

_I love you. _

_I love you._

He keeps every emotion he has at bay, locked deep inside as he concentrates on following those flashes of silver light. Each inch closer is the equivalent of grabbing smoke with his bare hands and using it as an anchor to pull himself along.

"Remember when I said…forget all that…I do need a soulmate…I need you…"

He can feel Sebastian's frustration thrum through him like a vibrating thread, like a violin string being plucked over and over.

Kurt reaches out with his mind, with his non-corporeal essence, until he can almost touch the body on the bed. Sebastian's body. He can see it – it's substance, it's form – with every word Sebastian speaks.

But then Sebastian stops talking, and everything disappears.

Kurt hovers and waits for one more ripple of light.

He holds his breath, waiting for Sebastian to talk.

"Come on," he thinks, hoping that this will work the same way it did with Lydia, that Sebastian will hear Kurt's thoughts and say something, anything.

"Hum, cough, curse, I don't care, Sebastian," Kurt thinks, "just do it. Please…please…"

Sebastian sits in the chair beside his body, head in hands, trying to decide on his next move, while somewhere close by in a place Sebastian can't see, Kurt waits for Sebastian to speak, and for the nexus to light his way back.

* * *

"But, we can't let you do this," Camelia, Lydia's mom, says, throwing her arms around Kurt's shoulders with Sebastian smiling inside and fondly rolling his eyes. "It's too expensive. It's just…too much."

"Too late," Sebastian says, holding the deceptively strong woman tight in his embrace. "It's already done."

"I don't know how we could ever repay you," Amira, Chelsea's mom, says, cutting in between the two to get her hug.

"Take care of those girls," Sebastian says, trying not to give in to the feeling of despair growing in Kurt's body, the hard knot in his gut. "That's all I ask."

"We will," Camelia says, laying a hand on their shoulders and smiling, joining in the hug one more time. "And I will keep you and your soulmate in my thoughts. I know he will wake up. I can feel it."

Sebastian clamps down hard on Kurt's tongue, not wanting to disagree.

When the two ladies finally let go, Sebastian peeks over to Chelsea, standing by Lydia's bedside, holding her soulmates hand. She had been whispering something a moment ago, but now she is silent, her expression caught somewhere between excitement and fear.

"So, are you ready for this?" Sebastian asks, resting a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently to give her comfort.

"Yes," Chelsea says, laying Lydia's hand back down on the blanket and bending over the bed rail to place a kiss on her forehead. "Yes, I am." Her words are accompanied by a sniffle as she turns and throws herself into the arms of the man who answered her prayers. "I don't know what to say," Chelsea whispers.

"Don't say anything," Sebastian says into the girl's ear. "Just keep praying for us. Okay? That was the deal."

"I will," Chelsea says, nodding. "I promise."

The privacy curtain slides open and the nurse from outside steps in.

"I need to take Chelsea to pre-op now," she says, reaching out a hand to the anxious young girl. Chelsea looks up at the faces surrounding her, then turns out of Sebastian's embrace and walks off with the nurse. Camelia gives him a last look and a grateful smile before following Chelsea out, and Amira takes up Chelsea's seat beside Lydia's bed, holding the unconscious girl's hand.

Sebastian can't think of anything more to say. He's done what he can. He can only hope that the doctors at this hospital handle Chelsea and Lydia better than they've handle Kurt and himself. He walks silently out of the makeshift room, clutching a bit of Chelsea's hope to him as he returns to his own soulmate. He's been away from Kurt's side for several hours and during that time he has been foolishly praying for a miracle - that he would walk through the curtain and find Kurt awake, sitting up and waiting for him.

He's not surprised but still disappointed when he notices Kurt's condition hasn't changed. He sits down in the chair by Kurt's bed, leaning back to stare up at the ceiling, looking at the white tiles with their weird and unattractive hole pattern repeating from square to square. He counts the tiles, then the holes, gathering his thoughts, putting them in order.

"So many times, I was such an ass," he says with a heavy sigh, "and I just should have told you. It was you, Kurt. It was always you." Sebastian rakes long fingers down an exhausted face. "I would have done anything you asked me to, Kurt. I would have moved the stars in the sky. I would have given you the sun, the moon. I know it sounds cheesy, but I don't care." Sebastian closes his eyes and imagines Kurt is sitting there with him, gazing at him with love and affection reflecting in his brilliant blue eyes. "I've been waiting for you forever, Kurt. I love you…"

Sebastian hadn't expected to say it just then, but it needed to be said. He doesn't know what time they have left or if he is actually going to see Kurt in the flesh again. But he says it as much for himself as for Kurt.

He needs to hear himself say those words.

"I love you, Kurt," he says again. "I love you."

Sebastian had hoped those words would be the key, but Kurt doesn't wake up, and Sebastian has lost all hope that he is going to.

"Remember when I said I didn't need a soulmate, Kurt? Well, forget all that. I was wrong. So wrong. I do need a soulmate. I need _my_ soulmate. I need _you_."

Tears start as he talks. He leans forward, holding the hand near him, resting against the chest laboring to rise and fall, rise and fall.

"And I know you're probably thinking that this is just those stupid, needy hormones talking," he continues, tears soaking the fabric beneath him, "the ones they tell us kick in when the bodyswap happens, but that's not true because I chose you, Kurt. Long before this ever happened, I chose you. The only reason why I didn't want a soulmate was because I was afraid it wouldn't be you. I couldn't lose you. And I can't lose you now, so please, wake up. Wake up and talk to me. Wake up and say anything to me. Call me a liar, call me a loser, I don't care. I just…I need to have you talk to me again."

Sebastian doesn't expect anything this time. He doesn't let himself hope that what he said made any difference. He compartmentalizes his thoughts, starts to make plans – people he needs to call, paperwork he needs to fill out, maybe even researching a different hospital he can have Kurt moved to. He's so preoccupied with these thoughts - which include possibly wrapping up what's left of his and Kurt's life - that he misses the first time a quiet voice says his name.

"Sebastian?"

Sebastian shakes his head. He's going to need to stop thinking about Kurt if he's going to be able to concentrate.

"Sebastian?"

Suddenly, that uncomfortable conversation between him and Kurt's dad seems inevitable, and he dreads it from the roots of Kurt's hair to the scuff on his stylish shoes.

"Sebastian?"

There's a pained sounding chuckle that causes the body on the bed to tremble, and every thought in Sebastian's mind is immediately wiped away.

Because there is only one thing, one person right now that matters, and as Sebastian looks up the length of the bed to look at his own sleeping face, what he sees instead is his green eyes staring back at him, but with the light of Kurt's spirit shining out through them.

* * *

Kurt is slow to open Sebastian's eyes, noticing the moment he returns to his soulmate's body how much heavier he feels, how much more burdened, but it's a good feeling, a solid feeling, and Kurt feels whole once again. He looks down at the man lying slumped against the bed – Kurt's own body, his own head turning to look at him, his eyes wide, an expression of shock on his face.

Kurt wants to laugh, but the gunshot wound to the chest hurts, so he chuckles lightly instead.

"Kurt?" Sebastian asks in a voice that sounds like home to Kurt.

Kurt nods and smiles.

"I love you, Sebastian," he says, "and I want you to know...I chose you, too."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** _Warning for talk of Medical procedures, and sexual acts._

"So, you've been here five days! How many more scans are they going to make you go through?" Amira asks, pouring another glass of water from a small plastic pitcher and handing it to Kurt. Kurt smiles wide when he takes it, which looks so bizarre to Sebastian, who isn't in the habit of smiling openly the way Kurt does over little things. It's so appealing when Kurt is in his own body.

Since he's in Sebastian's body, however, Sebastian almost wants to tell Kurt to stop it.

"I have no idea, to tell you the truth," Kurt replies, sipping the cold water through a straw to keep him from gulping it down too quickly. There have been many bizarre side-effects to the time he spent outside his soulmate's body. Extreme thirst is one. Double vision is another, and a mind-numbing headache, which he probably should have expected. Sebastian's body is playing catch up for all the time it has spent soulless, and Kurt is having a bit of a time navigating this new body that he's in, but that's not keeping the smile off of his – or Sebastian's – face. "They're pretty confident that everything's alright. I think they're just making sure that I don't dis-…run away again."

Kurt keeps stopping himself from saying disappear, because he almost did just that. Disappear. And as much as he's wanted to take a 24-hour nap every day since he's woken up, he can't convince himself to sleep longer than a few hours. What if his subconscious finds a way to disconnect from Sebastian's body, and this time the separation is permanent? He can't take that chance, not when he finally has his soulmate.

Not when he has his Sebastian.

"I bet you're itching to get out of here now that the two of you are together again," Camelia says, sitting beside Amira and taking her hand. Sebastian looks at the two of them sitting side by side. He's curious to bursting as to what the story is with the two of them. From idle small talk and a few unintentionally eavesdropped conversations, he knows that Amira's soulmate – Chelsea's dad – passed away almost immediately after Chelsea was born, and Camelia's husband – Lydia's dad – is _not_ her soulmate. But these two women – like Chelsea and Lydia – seem almost made for each other.

After years of not wanting to have anything to do with soulmates, here he is mixed in with the most intriguing group of people on the soulmate spectrum. He can't help but wonder what would happen with Amira and Camelia if Camelia's husband were out of the picture…

"Sebastian?" He hears his name said as if it's being repeated for the second or third time.

He snaps his attention back to the current conversation, smirking wide on Kurt's face.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'm itching to get to…" he drawls.

"Sebastian!" Kurt chides, almost spitting out his mouthful of water in the process.

Camelia and Amira titter, but Kurt looks appalled. Sebastian chuckles. It's funny seeing Kurt's indignant expression on his own usually cocky face. Oh, the expressions Sebastian didn't even know his face could make until Kurt woke up.

"I was going to say _a shower_, babe." Sebastian teases. "These clothes of yours are just about ripe. But it's nice to know where your mind's at."

Sebastian wiggles Kurt's eyebrows suggestively. Kurt morphs quickly from a look of indignation to embarrassment, cheeks coloring in a way Sebastian has never remembered blushing before.

Because Sebastian Smythe did not blush, but Kurt Hummel blushed more than anyone on human record.

"So, you…haven't seen me naked…yet?" he asks, lowering his voice to keep the ladies present in the room from hearing – not that it worked in roughly the ten foot space they are all gathered in.

"Well, I've taken a piss a few times, so I've seen the important parts," Sebastian says with a wink. Kurt moans and drops back on the bed, putting a hand to shield burning skin and squeezed shut eyelids, with Amira and Camelia laughing so hard beside them they can hardly catch a breath.

Sebastian walks up the bed to his completely mortified soulmate and presses kisses to the hands obscuring the red face underneath.

"You know I'm just playing around, baby," he whispers.

Kurt mumbles something unintelligible but doesn't remove the hands.

Sebastian takes the chair closest to the head of the bed and sits down. Without the IV stuck in his arm or the breathing apparatus attached over his nose and mouth, it's easy for Sebastian to be more confident that they'll be leaving the hospital soon, but so far the doctors seem to enjoy keeping them in the dark. Sebastian's certain that they're studying Kurt like a lab rat, trying to suss out the reason behind his vanishing act.

Already, in Sebastian's brain, plans for _Operation: Hospital Break-Out_ have begun.

"So, how are things with Lydia?" Sebastian asks as the two ladies begin to calm down.

"Oh," Camellia says, wiping the remaining tears from her eyes, "they're good. But like you guys, we're playing the waiting game."

"Yup," Amira adds. "Now that we're okay for the transplant, everything's at kind of a crawl."

"Really?" Sebastian pries one of the hands covering his face away and takes it, rubbing a thumb over the knuckles. He remembers how much Kurt liked that when they would walk hand-in-hand together and hopes it will pull him out of hiding. "I thought they just siphon the stuff out of Chelsea and stick it into Lydia."

"We wish," Amira says with a small, wistful smile. "Lydia had a minor procedure, so they have to wait for her to recover a little more from that before they actually get started."

"And then Chelsea has to have all sorts of tests done, too," Camelia supplies in the pause.

"But, they're soulmates…" Sebastian argues, wincing at the fact that it's an argument he wouldn't have relied on even a few days ago. Now, everything seems to depend on it.

"True," Amira continues, "but they have to screen her for a million and one things regardless. Lydia's immune system is going to be weak after they start the chemo. They can't take any chances."

"And that's a good thing," Kurt says, coming out of hiding to put a supportive hand over the one currently crushing his other hand out of worry. "They need to make sure that Lydia's going to get better after the procedure, not worse."

"Yeah," Sebastian says, his voice uncharacteristically meek. When he went ahead with his plan to help the two girls, he didn't for one moment think of the specifics involved. Blood tests, chemotherapy, weeks, if not months in the hospital. Not that any of that would have changed his mind, it's just...Lydia looked so small in her bed, and Chelsea…

He wants them to be safe...and happy.

Sebastian swallows hard, wondering if all these saccharine emotions are a consequence of being stuck in Kurt's body. After all, Kurt's the one with the big heart and the conscience, not him. He feels lips brush the hand he's using to grip at Kurt and he starts to relax.

"Mrs. Peterson?" A nurse peeks in through the curtain and calls out the name. "Mrs. Camelia Peterson?"

"That's me," she says, waving her hand and turning in her chair.

"So, Lydia's all set up in her permanent room," the nurse says, eyes bouncing from face to face staring back at her. "I can take you both up to see her now."

"Great," Camelia says with a giddy laugh, grabbing at Amira's hand and nearly lifting her from her seat. She rounds the end of Kurt's bed quickly and wraps Sebastian up in a hug. "Don't worry, sweetheart. It will all work out. We have strong girls." Camelia looks into exhausted blue eyes – blues eyes that don't quite match the soul inside – and kisses him on the forehead. Amira follows behind her friend and does the same while Kurt watches on, interested and entertained. Was this his cynical Sebastian commiserating over the fate of two teenaged girls? And without an inappropriate comment to be heard?

"Blessed be, ladies," Sebastian says with a wave good-bye.

"Blessed be," Amira says, waving at the two men and ducking out of the curtain.

"Blessed be, Sebastian," Camelia says. "And good-luck, Kurt. I hope they spring you soon."

Kurt waves at both ladies as they walk from the room, then turns his gaze on Sebastian, who's slumped in his chair, his mind working.

"She really got to you, huh?" Kurt asks.

"What?" Sebastian sits up straighter. "No. Well…maybe…"

"Don't sound so ashamed," Kurt says, reaching for the hand that had disappeared. "Caring about others is a good thing. My mom always said it was one of the reasons why we're here."

"Yeah?" Sebastian leans forward, taking the hand held out his way, leaning forward to kiss it gently. Well, I was thinking how sad it was, you know, to have someone you love being torn away and not being able to do anything to stop it." He looks up and catches Kurt smiling back at him with that smile that doesn't fit the face he's in. "I didn't want to be the kind of man who could walk away and do nothing."

Sebastian kisses Kurt again and a single image flashes through Kurt's mind.

Sebastian - standing between Kurt and a gun.

_"Look…if you have to shoot someone - fine. Shoot me. Let my friend go."_

Kurt smiles. Sebastian could never be a man who'd walk away from injustice.

"And that's why I love you, Sebastian Smythe," Kurt whispers.

Kurt can feel Sebastian smile against the skin of the hand he's kissing.

"Say it again?" he asks sweetly, adding another kiss.

"I love you, Sebastian," Kurt says.

Sebastian looks at Kurt with a devilish twinkle in borrowed blue eyes.

"I always knew you did," Sebastian says.

"Really?" Kurt scoffs when Sebastian doesn't return the sentiment. "And what else do you know?"

"I know that you smell like jasmine and oranges," he whispers, moving his way up the arm before him with the bare brush of soft lips. "And that your skin feels like silk."

"An-and what else?" Kurt asks as that mouth continues its journey closer to the lips quivering around Kurt's words.

"That you taste like coffee and cinnamon," Sebastian whispers. "I can't wait for us to change back so I can prove that I'm right."

Kurt sucks in a broken breath when lips kiss him lightly and sparks ignite all around him.

"I…I don't want to wait," Kurt says.

Sebastian stops, moving around to look at Kurt with wide eyes.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"I mean, I don't want to wait till we switch back to…" Kurt pauses. He's never been comfortable talking about sex, and asking for it is nearly unthinkable, but this is Sebastian. His soulmate. The man who knows more about him than anyone. The man who was willing to give up his own life to save Kurt's. After his ordeal in the void, Kurt knows it's time for his irrational fears to end. "I want to make love to you."

"Really?" Sebastian asks, grinning like an idiot.

"Yeah," Kurt answers with a nod. "As soon as possible."

Sebastian rushes forward and kisses him – a press of lips against lips, nothing overly romantic but exciting nonetheless. He pulls away and stumbles to the curtain with Kurt giggling behind him.

"Nurse!" Sebastian yells. "Nurse! We need the doctor _now_!"

* * *

"I'll be honest," Dr. Samon – a different doctor from the night when Kurt first came in – says, "we would like to keep him for observation a few more days."

"A-ha," Sebastian mutters as he throws a t-shirt over Kurt's head and helps maneuver the arm on his injured side into the arm hole. It's a new shirt Sebastian bought down at the hospital gift shop out of desperation. He didn't want to waste time racing to his penthouse for a change of clothes. His original button-down shirt with the bullet hole in it had been stuffed in a plastic bag and shoved into a police evidence locker downtown, and therefore unavailable for Kurt to wear. Kurt pulls out the hem of the too-large shirt to look down at the pastel pink material, and frowns at the brighter pink silk-screened words _It's a girl! _with their accompanying cartoon stork.

"Seb!" Kurt whines, holding the end down taut for Sebastian to see.

"It's the only thing they had," Sebastian says, which is mostly true. The other option was a pastel blue shirt that said _It's a boy! _Sebastian thought this shirt would be funnier. "No one will see it under my jacket."

"But seeing as we can find nothing on the scans that we need to worry about," the doctor continues despite the fact that neither man seems to be paying any attention, "and your gunshot wound is healing up nicely, I suppose there's no harm in releasing you."

"Super," Sebastian says, moving on to socks and shoes.

"Is there anything I should…avoid…while this gunshot wound heals?" Kurt asks, fishing to see if the doctor will say that sex is off the menu for now.

God, he hopes he doesn't.

"Avoid moving it too much, leaning on it, lifting heavy objects, that sort of thing. Your paperwork will give you a list of activities to avoid or modify. As you know, bonded people tend to recover from injury quicker, but don't over exert yourself. And follow up with your doctor in a couple of days."

Kurt nods.

"Thank you, doctor," he says.

Sebastian growls and Kurt giggles like a teenager.

The doctor sighs.

"I'll get the nurse to bring in your discharge forms," he says flatly before he leaves.

* * *

If not for a healing gunshot wound and an overwhelming, pervasive odor of BO, Sebastian would have been all over Kurt on the cab ride to his penthouse. As it is, Sebastian spends the whole ride kissing Kurt, closing his eyes to overlook the fact that it is his own lips he's kissing, his own neck he's sucking marks into, and the whimpers coming from Kurt's mouth are mostly comprised of his own voice. When they get to Sebastian's penthouse, they are stymied momentarily by the journey from the car to the elevator and then up to his place.

The first room they hit is the bathroom for a much needed shower. As sensual and romantic as Sebastian tries to make it, it doesn't feel the way he imagined it because this is Kurt – yes, it's Kurt moaning at his touch, encouraging him with returned kisses and contented hums – but it's _his_ body. It's playing out like a kinky sex dream – erotic, but not quite idyllic. But Kurt wants this just as much as he does, and Sebastian will take Kurt any way he can get him, in any form.

He soaps his own body down, concentrating his kisses and touches on all those place that make _him_ weak at the knees, sure that his body still reacts the same with Kurt inside of it. Whether it's out of an intricate knowledge of his own erogenous zones or inexperience on Kurt's part, Kurt is writhing with head thrown back, nails scratching at the bathroom tile, breathing open-mouthed into the heated air around them.

It's not until they move from the shower to the bed that Kurt begins to become shy. Sebastian reaches for the erection growing between them, and behind lust-blown eyes, Kurt pulls back a bit.

"We don't have to do this if you're still not ready," Sebastian says, even with the body around him begging to be touched and kissed. Making love is an emotional act, but sex is physical, and having not experienced it yet, Kurt's virgin body is screaming for release with Sebastian locked inside, suffering that torture. "We can wait until we swap back."

"I _do_ want to," Kurt says, looking up into his own eyes, but more and more seeing only Sebastian. "I'm just nervous. I've dreamt so long about being with you…"

"You have?" Sebastian asks with surprise.

"Of course I have," Kurt says, "but this is not exactly how I pictured it. It's a little bit weird…and interesting."

"Yeah," Sebastian agrees. "I mean, I knew I was hot and all, but I didn't realize _how_ hot." Sebastian stares down the length of his own naked, wet body stretched out beneath him and whistles low. "Damn."

"Sebastian!" Kurt squeals, shaking his head.

Sebastian laughs, pressing kisses to the skin he can reach, trying to help Kurt relax.

"That's not the only thing," Kurt admits. "There's also…you know…mechanics…and stuff…"

Kurt's sentence is a stuttering string of words punctuated in each pause by a deeper and deeper blush, and Sebastian pretends to be offended.

"Well, sweetheart," Sebastian says pointing at Kurt, "that body is strictly a top."

"Not today it's not," Kurt laughs, but it's a nervous laugh, not a teasing one.

"You don't want to give it a try?" Sebastian asks. "I mean, there's nothing to it. Just stick tab A into slot B and repeat…a lot."

Kurt chuckles, rolling green eyes to stare up at the ceiling above Sebastian.

"If it makes you feel any better," Sebastian continues, "I've never bottomed before."

"Why not?" Kurt asks.

Sebastian shrugs.

"It didn't interest me. It seemed a little too intimate. All of my hook-ups were about getting off, and that didn't seem like the easiest way."

Kurt nods, lower lip caught between white teeth as he thinks of a way to respond without showing his jealousy.

"And now?" Kurt asks.

"And now I want to do everything, try anything, as long as I get to do it with you."

Sebastian looks down at Kurt with honest, sincere eyes, and Kurt smiles.

"That was a good answer," he says, reaching an arm up to pull Sebastian close and kissing him softly.

"So, how do you want to do this?" Sebastian asks, still hovering, making sure not to lean his weight on a chest with bones that are still healing.

"Well, there's very little I can do except lie completely still that isn't going to hurt like hell."

"Then go ahead and lie still," Sebastian says, reaching to his bed side dresser for a bottle of lube and a condom. "You don't have to do anything."

"Well, I'd like to be an active participant," Kurt says with a hiccup of a laugh.

"You will, baby," Sebastian says. "I just don't want you to hurt yourself." Sebastian settles down in front of Kurt, skillfully rolling a condom on the hard on he's sporting and covering him with lube while Kurt watches, listening to the escaping hisses and gasps that accompany each touch.

While Sebastian strokes Kurt, kissing trembling lips and swallowing every moan, he thinks. He doesn't want to hurt Kurt's body in any way. He's going to need to open him up carefully so he doesn't tear anything. He breaks away from Kurt's kisses, leaving him with a small whimper. He reaches back into his dresser and pulls out a small, smooth metal plug. Kurt watches him with interest as he lubes it up and hands it over to his soulmate.

"Uh, where am I supposed to put this?" Kurt asks, looking over the obsidian-colored object dripping with lube.

"Where do you think?" Sebastian asks, toying with Kurt purposefully, loving the expression of surprise Kurt gives him before he rolls to face away.

"You want me to stick this into my body?" Kurt asks, looking from the plug, to his own ass that Sebastian has bent at the waist and put on display for him, and then back to the plug.

"Well, sweetheart, you've never done this before," Sebastian explains with a condescending lilt. "I don't want this to hurt."

Kurt looks at the plug with an eyebrow raised.

"Okay, wait a minute," he says, and Sebastian sighs in exasperation at being made to wait, "if you're a top, who was the last person who used this?"

"It's mine, sweetheart," Sebastian answers with a shake of the head. "Just because I don't let other guys fuck me like that doesn't mean I don't play with myself."

Kurt swallows hard at the mention of other men but he says nothing. He walked into that. Sebastian turns slightly to look at Kurt.

"Would you feel better if I did it and you just watched?" he asks, reaching back for the small device.

"Yes," Kurt says, mesmerized as Sebastian takes the metal plug and searches out his entrance with gentle fingers. Sebastian circles the puckered hole with an index finger still coated in lube and moans, and Kurt is struck absolutely dumb. It's _his_ body Sebastian is playing with, _his_ voice making those heavenly noises, but it's Sebastian performing these acts, Sebastian enjoying his body's response to them. A strange sense of jealousy and need and want grows inside Kurt's mind as he watches the care Sebastian takes prepping his entrance, gently gauging his body's reaction to the plug being slipped inside, and then moving it in and out, back and forth, so that Kurt, just a spectator, can feel it mirrored in the body that he's in – a body that knows more than his own about pleasing men and what it feels like to be pleased by men. The nerves around him remember and they react.

He can feel his own body on the brink even though he has yet to lay a finger on it.

"Come on, baby," Sebastian gasps with another twist of the plug. "Are you going to join in on this? Because I'm almost done here."

Sebastian felt bad doing this at the start. He felt like he was taking away Kurt's first time, which had never been his intention. So many times, sex had been an act for him, and he never gave any thought to anything but his own pleasure. But this experience is supposed to be for Kurt. This is _his_ first time, and here Sebastian was, taking it from him, masturbating with his body, which is something Sebastian swore he would never do.

But Kurt and Sebastian are soulmates. Their bodies respond to one another on a completely different level than all those randoms he had been with it. He not only feels the sensation of turning Kurt's body on, he can feel the way Kurt, watching him, has immediately become aroused. Kurt's cock, throbbing and pulsing between his legs, is more affected by him watching Sebastian than from the actual experience of it.

Every response Sebastian feels is entirely Kurt's doing.

He needs Kurt now. He needs them to come together, but Kurt isn't exactly sure what Sebastian is asking him to do. He feels Kurt's uncertainty in his head and in his heart, so Sebastian moves toward him, tossing the plug aside and positioning himself against the cock hard against his back. Slowly Sebastian slides down over it, inch by inch to get accustomed to the stretch, to the feeling of being full, of being complete. Sebastian presses against him, back to front, and Kurt loops an arm around him. Kurt holds Sebastian for a moment, holds on to the feeling of them sharing heat, breathing together, heartbeats racing or slowing to match one another.

"Can I move?" Sebastian asks, kissing up the arm draped across him.

Kurt holds on tighter but he nods.

Sebastian starts to move against him and Kurt's gasp turns into a full-fledged moan.

"Oh…oh my…oh God," he stammers, too astounded to move. "Oh, Sebastian…why didn't…why didn't we do this before?"

Sebastian has a million answers for that question – some of them sarcastic, some of them honest. But the only one that matters is that Kurt had an image of what his first time would be like, and that image included a yet to be named soulmate.

Sebastian loved him too much to besmirch that image.

There's something that builds between them as Sebastian moves and Kurt's grip grows stronger – an energy that gets lost for moments between Kurt's shudders and Sebastian chanting Kurt's name. He reaches a hand back to pull Kurt closer, fitting them both together.

It sounds like a clap of thunder in his ears when it starts, and the heat that radiates from his and Sebastian's body is so incredibly intense that at first Kurt wants to pull away from it, but there's a sensation that overwhelms him, of every molecule in his body being taken apart and rearranged.

For a second, he fears he's transporting back into the dark.

It's Sebastian who understands this new feeling first, and when the dull pain in his arm returns, and the tightness around his cock replaces what seconds ago was a fullness in his borrowed body, he switches gears to keep Kurt from losing the orgasm that had been building within him.

"Sebastian!" He hears the voice echo in his ears in all of its sweet brilliance, its lyrical perfection. He wraps his arm around his soulmate, holding on as he pounds into Kurt's body – Kurt's body with _Kurt_ back inside – deeper and deeper, driving him closer to the edge of what feels like madness, a glorious and all-encompassing insanity.

Sebastian sinks his mouth over Kurt's neck and wraps his fingers around Kurt's cock, pushing and pulling until the resulting orgasm rises up Kurt's body and rips from his throat with a scream.

"Oh, God! Sebastian!" he groans as he feels Sebastian lose control, biting down gently into Kurt's shoulder, his hips stuttering and halting, grunts fading down his throat.

Kurt raises his hands in front of his eyes, threading his fingers into his hair, looking around him.

"Sebastian," Kurt pants, "Are you…"

"Yeah," Sebastian says, pecking light kisses down Kurt's neck, "yeah, I'm me again."

Kurt cranes his neck for more kisses, leaning his body back for more touches, wanting more of Sebastian around him.

"Oh my…oh my God," Kurt sighs, leaning his forehead into the pillow beneath him. "Is it always like that?"

"Like what?" Sebastian asks, resting his head against Kurt's spine, hearing his heart pound.

"Amazing," Kurt says. "Incredible. Was it always like that for you?"

Sebastian swallows down a small wave of shame, pushing it back with kisses to Kurt's back, the sweat on his tongue filling his mouth with the taste of coffee and cinnamon.

"Not even close," Sebastian says.


End file.
